Andrew J. Nathan is Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. He is the author of China's Transition, China's Crisis: Dilemmas of Reform and Prospects for Democracy, and Chinese Democracy, the coauthor of The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China's Search for Security, and the co-editor of The Tiananmen Papers. »

China's New Rulers (paperback)

The Secret Files

By Andrew J. Nathan
By Bruce Gilley

At the Chinese Communist Party's 16th Congress in November 2002, a group of new leaders took over the world's most populous country. Their accession as the "Fourth Generation" of rulers of the People's Republic—following the generations of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin—signaled the end of a long, complex struggle for power.

Yet little has been known outside high Party circles about either that struggle or the men who emerged victorious from it. China's New Rulers, based on confidential Party files leaked to a Chinese writer abroad, offers an unprecedented glimpse into the most orderly succession in the turbulent history of the People's Republic. At its center are detailed descriptions of the nine men who will rule China for the next five years—their backgrounds, their characters, and their visions for the future. Among the challenges they will face are economic reform and China's integration into a global economy, pressures for political liberalization and human rights, ethnic unrest in Tibet and Xinjiang, the status of Taiwan, and relations with the US.

China's New Rulers is an extraordinary account of a high-level political drama that has largely taken place in secret. It portrays many key figures in the Party, government, and military, and provides new information on Jiang Zemin's thirteen years in office. Most importantly, it contains the first insights into matters of great importance to the West: who will lead China, what changes they may bring to their country, and how they may act as international partners and competitors.

Reviews

It gives an acute account of the men who will oversee [China's] immediate political future—revealing some intriguing personality quirks along the way—and provides important insights into the problems and solutions that the new rulers are contemplating.
— The Guardian, London

As informative as an intelligence assessment.... Readers...will be keen for this glimpse into the new leaders' views on China's future direction.
— Booklist

Fascinating for the account...of how the party leadership selects and perpetuates itself; and revelations of what kind of men the new leaders are....
— Jonathan Mirsky, Times Literary Supplement

A remarkable book...the best guide we shall get...essential reading for anyone involved with China in the broadest sense.
— The Sunday Telegraph, London

With each passing year, China and its mandarinate become a little less opaque. The reports summarized in this volume represent another giant step forward in penetrating the old veil of secrecy that once shrouded China and its political processes with a virtually impenetrable screen. Whatever may follow, these documents provide a fascinating look behind that screen and help us understand how China's leaders interact and govern this most consequential of countries.
— Orville Schell, Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley

Published on the eve of the emergence of a new generation of leadership in China, this volume could not be more timely for China watchers.
— Choice

China's New Rulers has a more enduring value because of its vivid picture of the party's procedures in selecting new leaders who also turn out to display outstanding qualities. The book portrays the party as a tightly knit establishment in which younger cadres rise like cream to the top on the basis of a combination of merit and luck in their patronage ties.
— Lucian W. Pye, Foreign Affairs

China's New Rulers—based on the Chinese book Disidai—provides a peek inside the black box of the highest levels of the Communist Party of China (CCP). It gives the outside world by far its most detailed and most reliable account of the men who are likely to rule China in the next few years. It sheds new light on the plots that brought them to power in the 1990s and on tendencies in what they think, or at least appear to think. We observe a peaceful transition to power—a first for the CCP—but see as well an entrenched political culture in which the views of superiors count for nearly everything and the opinions of ordinary citizens for almost nothing.
— Perry Link

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